Jeffrey Krieg (part 2)

Vision Australia ID 0:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Kate Cooper 0:04

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations with emerging and experienced, creative voices in our community, on air now and also available on Vision Australia, radio podcasts. I'm Kate Cooper, and our guest on today's program is ornithologist, writer and musician Jeffrey Krieg. We spoke with Jeff last week about his recently released book, Raptors at a glance, a guide to identifying South Australian birds of prey, the product of 13 years of research and photography. I'm delighted to continue our conversation this week. Welcome to the program again, Jeff.

Jeffrey Krieg 0:59

Thanks, Kate, thanks for having me again. I'm so grateful to be back here.

Kate Cooper 1:02

And Jeff, before we continue, would you read us an extract from your book? Yeah,

Jeffrey Krieg 1:06

Yeah, absolutely... if you'll indulge me, thanks for asking. Okay, so what I thought I might do is just... read a little introduction to one of the species. So the book is divided up into individual species chapters. Each chapter obviously focuses on that one species has all the photographs and all the information about that species. And each chapter is actually, is actually structured the same way, so that it follows a structure that is, you know, it becomes quite familiar to the reader as they as they read through. So each one will start off with a little introductory paragraph, just to... kind of whet the appetite, kind of give you a bit of an idea of what this of what this birds all about. 

So if you'll indulge me, I'll just read this... little introduction about the Little Eagle, which is one of our Australian endemic species. It's found in Australia and not, it's not a worldwide known species. It's actually, yeah, just found in pretty much, just found in Australia, in our country, which is beautiful, probably goes a bit, probably a bit underrated, because it flies under the radar, because it's not as big as the Wedge-tailed Eagle. It's... like we only have two true Booted eagles in Australia, so it probably doesn't get as much publicity as it deserves. But I'd like to read the little introductory chapter, and you'll get a feel for how each each chapter starts off. Okay, so here we go... 

All the power and majesty of the mighty eagles in a compact package. That is probably the best way to describe the Australian Little Eagle. Unlike most eagles, they're actually quite small, but that certainly does not make them any less impressive. A quick look at the eyes, the powerful bill, massive feet and talons tell you that this eagle is proof that good things come in small packages. Apart from its size, everything else about this species screams Our Eagle. And when you consider that our mighty Wedge- tailed Eagle preys on rabbits, and so too does the Little Eagle. 

At only half the size of its larger relative, you start to get an appreciation for the power that is packed into this beautifully crafted, compact eagle. They are impressive hunters, and can soar effortlessly for long periods of time with hardly a wing beat. But don't let that fool you either, as they are quite capable of fast flight when it is called for this comes in handy with the variety of prey that they hunt, stunningly beautiful in both the light morph and also the rarer dark morph. This species has it all, albeit in small form, they certainly are a finely tuned species with some very impressive characteristics to marvel at.

Kate Cooper

Jeff, as well as the quality of the information you provide, I really like the tone you're talking to me as a listener, yeah, if... that has to be said, yeah. And so you involve your audience, yeah, yeah, directly into the story. So that's a really good technique to use.

Jeffrey Krieg

Thanks for picking that up, Kate, yeah, that's definitely what I've tried to achieve with the book for sure. Yeah.

Kate Cooper 4:01

Jeff, you have a promotional video about your project - and early on in that, you explained that, as well as being home to the 24 different species of birds of prey in Australia, we're also home to some of the world's rarest, most endangered and most historically persecuted raptors. Would you speak with us about why these birds are endangered and what can be done about that?

Jeffrey Krieg 4:25

Yeah, absolutely, I It's a sad fact, and it's not a great... thing to be able to boast about. But yeah, unfortunately, we do have some very rare species. The Grey Falcon is probably one of the, the rarest falcons in the definitely, it's the rarest falcon in Australia, but possibly even worldwide. And the Red Goshawk, as I mentioned earlier, they are two of the rarest species that we have, and they are and they are endangered. And look, I'm not a scientist, and I don't have a lot of science to back up what I'm saying here. But you can... readily read about this by people who know much more about it than I do. 

But unfortunately, most of it is it probably just comes down to, it's a result of us. It's a result of humans and the way we... live, I guess - because the more habitat and that, that we cut down for, whether it's... for for residential purposes, or whether it's for providing paper, or whatever it is, the more habitat that we destroy, unfortunately, it just means you're reducing the places that these these birds actually have to live, in a lot of cases. That definitely people may argue that, tthat's not what it all is and that. And you know, there may be some merit to that, but it's definitely a factor. We are definitely a factor. 

And the way we encroach on their spaces, spaces and their natural habitats, that is... forcing a lot of species to withdraw further from their historical distribution throughout the country. So yes, we definitely have a lot to answer for in that. And as far as the persecuted thing goes, again, I don't know the science and the numbers of this, but the Wedge-tailed eagle is probably the world's most historically persecuted bird of prey. When European settlers came out to Australia, we obviously need farms, and we need crops, and we need all that sort of thing, so we clear land and we have livestock. 

Livestock, unfortunately, got a bit of a bad rap for being preyed on by Wedgetailed Eagles in the '70s and... 60s, 70s, and there was actually a price on that. There was actually a price on their head, like the government would would pay your money if you could bring in dead like Wedge-tailed Eagle carcasses, because they they were seen as... pests. They were seen as, they're eating our livestock, and we need our livestock to survive. Many, many studies have been done since then, and I think the the latest ones would definitely tell you that that's not really the case. The the effect on livestock from Wedge Tailed eggs is only very minimal, if at all. I've done a lot of farmers. 

Personally, I've grown up with farmers. I have relatives who are farmers. I don't know any of them that have personally seen a Wedge Tailed Eagle ever take a lamb. What they might do is eat dead lambs and dead sheep, because it's carrion. And Wedge Tailed Eagles will eat carrion. You'll see them on kangaroos, on the size of roads, and that sort of thing. And so sometimes people saw that and thought they're eating the lambs, but or they're eating the sheep, but they're probably most likely just eating eating already deceased animals. 

So the effect that we're starting, eagles have on livestock is considered negligible these days by the scientists and the specialists that would actually do the research. There are still farmers out there that don't believe that. And, you know, I know, and I get it. You know, farmers have a hard, hard job to do in their own right, and everyone's obviously entitled to their opinions, but science would tell you that they... don't really have much of an effect on on the livestock, and unfortunately, that's why they were persecuted for such a long time. 

Thankfully, that... all got... squashed, and the government went, No, we can't do this. And they're now protected in our country. You can't... shoot them, you can't kill them, which is fantastic, and that's the way it should be. They should be protected and looked after, because they are a part of our environment. They were here before. They were here before most of us were so, yeah, I think you have to...respect nature as well and try and live with it, not at... its expense. So yeah.

Kate Cooper 8:27

And just on that - in your video, you also tell us that apex predators are indicators of the health of our environment and our ecosystems. And you add that, whether we realise it or not, we need these birds around. So tell us why that's so.

Jeffrey Krieg 8:44

Okay, yeah, so again, I'm not a specialist on this. I'm not an ecologist, but it just, it's common sense. I kind of think of it as common sense. Apex Predators.... are obviously, you know, they're at the top of the food chain. So in the Bird Kingdom, birds of prey, the... at the top of the food chain. They don't have any other birds that prey on them, apart from other raptors do sometimes prey. Raptors will prey on some other raptors, some smaller raptors, but they're pretty much in terms of all the rest of the Bird Kingdom. They're at the top of... the Bird Kingdom. 

So for them to be present in a particular part of the environment or in an ecosystem, you need a well balanced supply of prey and other food sources below them, obviously, which means that if you've got a bird of prey around, you've got a good you know, that indicates that you potentially have a good, healthy ecosystem that supports that apex predator. If you don't see the bird of prey around in... an environment where you would normally be expected to see them, and you don't see them, it can be an indicator that the... ecosystem is out of whack. 

They don't, they may not have the prey below them, enough prey below them to support them living in that particular area anymore. So there's lots of studies that have gone into this as well, and I can only really comment on that, on surface value like that, but it definitely is a factor, and they can absolutely be key indicators, or at least partial indicators, to how well the ecosystem is balanced below them. Yeah.

Kate Cooper 10:12

Thank you for that. And Jeff, your book includes information about key bird identification points besides the colour photographs and your written descriptions - would you describe for us some of the audio and other sensory forms of identification that might be possible?

Jeffrey Krieg 10:30

Yep, okay, I'll give this a crack, Kate - yep, that's a tricky question, because birds of prey, just by nature, are a very visually identified species category of birds, sorry, and they, whilst they do make calls like other birds, they're not as... definitely not vocal, known as vocal birds - because if you're a predator, you don't really want to be flying around, squawking, announcing your, you know, your presence - you want to sneak up on your prey. So by nature, they're not particularly vocal. There are some species that are much more vocal than others, and a lot of species are more vocal around their breeding season, when they're calling to one another and things like that. 

So in terms of other ways of identifying birds of prey, their vocal calls is definitely a way that you can do it. I haven't covered vocal calls in the book because I find that it's very... hard to write in a book what a bird call sounds like... like you could write, you could try and sort of, you know, and spell it out and phonetically and make it... look like it sounds, but it's hard to... hear what that sounds like unless you actually experience it firsthand. So I deliberately didn't include calls in the book, because I think in this day and age, there are so many other fantastic avenues out there. There are books that have already covered it, and there are so many other fantastic avenues out there where you can, you can look up audio calls. 

eBird is a is a... website that springs to mind, they have... eBird is kind of a world database of all the all the birds throughout the world. You can look up any species you like, and that species will actually have sound recordings included, and then you can actually listen to those sound recordings, and if you're good, and if you want to spend as much, if you like, want to spend as much time as you can on it to learn it that you could absolutely learn to identify birds of prey via their calls. There are some that are so similar to each other that it's hard to tell apart, but if you if, but if that's what you're focusing on, there's no there's no doubt you could, you could actually set aside the time dedicate it to listening to the calls, learning them, learning the subtle differences between them. 

And yeah, I got no doubt that someone could, could identify birds of prey just by their calls, even though they don't do it that often, and you might not hear it out in the out in the wild that often. There are birds that I've actually there certain species that I have found simply based on their calls, because they're hard to see sometimes, and they're hidden in trees. So you sit and you wait and you listen for their calls, or you listen for the calls of other birds around them. So if they're priced like if you're in an area where there's a lot of honey eaters around, you hear all these honey eaters start chirping, or noisy miners start chirping. You know, Oh, hang on, there's a predator around. So you sit and you wait and you listen, and sometimes you might be rewarded by hearing the calls of the predator as well. And in that way, you can actually locate them a lot better. If you're in dense forest, and some species, you do actually have to do that. 

So audio sounds and the calls are definitely and these days, they're so much more readily available than they were when I was a kid. Like, like I said, you can look up, you can look up online and probably find the bird call to just about any bird call that you that you want to, that you want to know what it sounds like, you can probably find it somewhere online. So, yeah, I yeah...

Kate Cooper 13:43

That is fantastic.

Jeffrey Krieg 13:45

Thank you. No worries.

Kate Cooper 13:51

On Vision Australia radio, you're listening to our conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is ornithologist, writer and musician Jeffrey Krieg - and Jeff, your book has two purposes, to educate everyday people like me about the birds of prey in our South Australian environment and to reinforce the knowledge of specialists. So how challenging was it to balance your writing style to achieve both these purposes?

Jeffrey Krieg 14:21

Yeah, yeah, it was... challenging. Or, it was challenging, and it wasn't. I made the decision early on, and I think, and you picked up on it when I did that reading earlier, Kate and I made the decision earlier, like, really early on in the piece, that this is how I talk, this is how I write, this is how I want... to communicate this to people. I wanted to really put it in simple terms, I guess, is a better way to start. I wanted to... I wanted anyone that picked it up to be able to read it. They didn't have to have a mountain of scientific backing behind them to be able to understand what I was talking about. So I really wanted to, like you said, and other people have commented that have read the book, said it, when I read it, It sounds like you're talking to me. It sounds like I'm hearing...your words - which is great, because that's what I was trying to achieve. I really wanted people, they can connect better, they can they learn, they learn better. 

But at the same time, I wanted it to be authentic and written from the heart. I wanted it to be factually accurate as well. And I mean, I've known birds of pro for a long time, so I did try and just write most of it off the top of my head. I've got lots of resources that I've read over the years. It's impossible to try and list them all, but all that knowledge is kind of solidified in my mind, and I've and then through experience, I've learned so much. So each time, yeah, I wrote a chapter, I tried to... write it from the heart, and I think that's how that kind of, that style developed, and that's how it came through. 

And the part about reinforcing the knowledge of the specialists is really, yeah, I just wanted to make sure everything was factually accurate, so that if you're a specialist, if you know birds of prey, you're a professional ornithologist, you can pick up my book and still glean something from it. But what it also does is... it supports all of the people that have gone before me. So, you know, there are many people that, many fantastic writers out there that have written about birds of prey over the years, and I wanted my work to support their work, you know, to back up the things that they have learned and the things that they've said. 

So that's really what that yeah, what that reinforcing the knowledge of the specialist is all about. I didn't want to be contradictory to anything else that we've already learned. I wanted to follow suit with what we know as fact, and, yeah, to try and... do both. I think I achieved it in the book, but yeah, it was challenging, and hopefully I've achieved that. Yeah.

Kate Cooper 16:32

What a brilliant approach. And following on from my last question, would you describe for us more about your writing process in preparing the book? So where, when and how did you do your writing? Did you keep a written journal, audio notes, combination of those? And how often did you pause in your field work to write?

Jeffrey Krieg 16:52

Yeah. Okay, great question. I think that most of my writing was done in one big hit. But what I did was early on in the piece, probably about so I decided to write this book in about 2011 I think. And I officially started writing some of it in 2012... so the introductory chapters in 2012, I wrote those out because I wanted to get... a sort of a foundation of what I was trying to say and where I was heading with all this. So I wrote the introductory chapters out. I went back and edited them and fixed them up and changed things... as late as 2023 - but I did the bulk of that writing really early on in the piece, in 2012 and 2013. 

And then what I did with the... rest of the book was, like I mentioned earlier, I wanted every chapter to follow a structure so that as you read, you get used to hearing this, learning this, and then, and then hearing this, and then kind of solidifying it all, and then you knew that each chapter you read was going to be of a similar format. And that repetition helps people to remember things. So what I did was I in 2014 I think it was when I'd taken because after writing the introductory chapters, I went right, I've got to get photos. So from then, I just dedicated a lot of time to taking photographs and doing field work. 

Once I'd gotten enough photos for one species, which I think happened to be the Black Shouldered Kite. There were a lot. There are a few living in the area. I was living in Mawson Lakes at the time, and there was a few pairs around there in wet seasons. There's quite a few of them around, which is quite handy. So once I had enough photographs for the book, and I... again, I swapped out photographs later, when I got better photographs. But I had enough. I had, you know, 30, 20 or 30 photos of that species. I sat down and wrote that chapter. So I wrote that chapter as a template for what the other chapters would would then follow on from how they would follow on. 

And so that then became the, yeah, that became the template of what I would do for every other species. I think I did it with one other species, and that was the Little Eagle. Once I'd gotten enough photos for them, I did the same thing. Actually, I might have even started that before I had enough photos after that. I kind of did.. things a little bit backwards after that. So I had the templates. I knew where the book was heading. I had the introduction, I had the conclusion, and I had all that planned out already. I knew what I was going to say in all of that. Once I had all that, the two templates I went right now we're gonna go and get photos. So I really have to go and keep getting the rest of the photos. 

So I just dedicated the next few, you know, several years, to just getting as much photographic as much photographic evidence as I could of each species. Because the book is... a hugely visual photographic guide. So I needed to have the material. So I went out and took all those photos. Then what I did was I came back, probably once I thought I had enough for every species, and there were a couple lingering that I didn't have enough for, but I just put them on the back burner for a bit. Then I went, right, I'm going to start writing. I took a huge slab of time off of work, probably three. Three months, I think, I think it was. I had a lot of long service leave built up. I took three months leave. 

And what I did was I would sit down and organise a chapter based on the photograph. So I would get all of the photographs that I thought I wanted to include, 20 to 30, whatever it sort of amounted to, and I would start to lay them out on the 14 so I might have dedicated, say, 14 pages to each species. I've got a dedicated 14 pages. That's the space I've got to work in. These are the photos I want to put in there. So I've got to get these photos all sorted, make sure they kind of follow a bit of a sequence. And there's, you know, there's enough good photos on one page, because not all the photos in the book are fantastic, high quality. I've tried to... cover a wide range, from like distance shots to close-ups and sort of everything in between. 

So not everything is a fantastic photo. So I wanted to balance that out on each page, make sure that we had some really good ones, and some and ones that were just more sort of identification guides. So I did that, laid out all the... photographs for each thing, each species, and then left space for the text. And then what I did was, once I'd laid out all those chapters, I came back, and then I went, Right, this is how much space I've got to fill. I know the format. I know what I've got to write, how each chapter is broken up into its different segments. I've got enough. I've got this much space. And that's, and that was... my guideline. 

That's how I went, Okay, this is how I know when to stop rambling on or to keep rambling on. So, yeah, I tried to... make it as simple as that for myself. If that is simple, I tried to... make sure I know what I've got to aim for, and I can write as much as I can that says enough about each species in that particular space. So... the text kind of, you know, compliments the the photographs at the same time.

Kate Cooper 21:42

And what about working with editors and publishers to prepare your work for publication? What have you learned from that process?

Jeffrey Krieg 21:49

Yeah, I imagine you probably have... because you do this a lot with a lot of writers, and you'd probably get a lot of varying if you ask this question regularly, you'd probably get a lot of varying answers on this, definitely. And it depends as well, like if it's, if someone's gone through a traditional publishing route or if they've gone down the self-publishing route. I mean, you have completely different experiences to both, and it's really up to the individual writer these days. You know, there's... so much... out there for indie writers or self-publishers. There's so many avenues these days that people can have a voice if they feel they've got a voice and they want to... express that voice. There's definitely so many more avenues out there these days than there ever was in the past. 

So you know, traditionally, you had to get a publisher to pick up your book and go, Yeah, we'll write it. But these days you can do it. Otherwise, I chose the self-publishing route, mainly because I was chipping away at this over a long period of time, and I've and I know, and I mentioned to you off-air, I think Kate, that I'm a real Do It Yourself kind of person. Anyway, I loved, I loved the challenge of doing the book. I loved the whole creative process, you know, writing and doing the photography, laying out the photography in the book, you know, making it look well ordered and sequential, you know, trying to... do all those things. 

So I really enjoyed the whole... I've got a bit of a design background as well, so that all those elements, I wanted to use as many of my skills as I could. One, because I enjoyed it, and two, because, yeah, I didn't know if I presented this idea to a traditional publisher, whether they would go No, no, I don't really like... your idea, I can't really see it going anywhere. I just thought, rather than face that disappointment, I'd rather just do what I want to do, and if the book sells one day, great. If it doesn't sell, then it doesn't matter. It's on me. I just wanted to write what I had to say, and the rest of it would would take care of itself - however that panned out. 

So I went down the self-publishing route and I was fortunate enough to work with some... fantastic people. The, I guess the flip side of self-publishing is that you you need to put up the upfront costs yourself. So that's... the trade-off. You do get a lot more of a say in what is going in the book, obviously. And you can have as much or as little as you like. If you work with a self-publisher, you can say, Well, no, can you please help more with this? Or No, I'll take care of that. And you can kind of get a bit more of a balance. I feel through... my experience anyway, and I had some great experiences with self-publishing companies, and they did what I asked them to do, like they the the one I finally went with.

They're a fee-for-service self-publisher. So you literally pay them to do this part of it, this part of it, and they'll... do that part of it. That's what they'll do. And if you want them to do more, well, then you pay them for their... they can offer more, but then you need to pay them more money to do, to provide that service. So you have to understand, when you do to go down a self-publishing route, that that is what you are going to get as well, and they can have as much or as little input as you want providing you make that clear at the start, and that's part of your contract and part of what you pay for. 

So yeah, I had... these guys were fantastic. They did all the parts of the book that I couldn't do, like making it a... book, getting a nine-bit ISBN. They redesigned the cover for me, which they did free of charge as well, which was great. So, yeah, but... they kept the core. They didn't... really change any of what I'd already done, the... apart from redesigning the cover, they just, they went through it. I worked with a really good editor who was fantastic. She was very complimentary of the book. I never met her. I just know her through... her writing and her comments about the book, but she was very confident. She was fantastic. She... I didn't pay her, I didn't pay her to do a glowing review of the book, but she actually had some like, fantastic things to say about it as well. 

And she was really helpful in just finding the little things that I'd perhaps, you know, a lot of things in writing, a lot of things change over the years. So what I learned back at school or in uni isn't necessarily the standard way of doing things anywhere like anymore - like the way, you know, the way paragraphs are structured, that kind of thing, there's so many different ways to do it these days. But this... lady, was very helpful in bringing me up to speed with what is the accepted norm these days. So she helped me with a lot of that. 

And obviously, yeah, all the picking up, all the all the typos and spelling mistakes, which you know you're making, and you can read over it as many times as you want, and... but you can never cover everything like you so, because you're so close to it, you read what you think it's going to say. And you don't necessarily pick up all the typos because your brain is too clever. It just goes, I know what I'm saying. And you just read what you... know you've said. You don't necessarily see the tiny little, minute problems. 

And that's where everyone, I think, if... that's one piece of advice I could give anyone. It's, don't write and... don't write a book and think, No, I don't need an editor or a or a proofreader. That is absolutely money well spent - like, I spent a decent amount of money on it, but I don't regret it. It's... a process that needs to happen. I think everyone's different, each of their own, but yeah, I think, and it's, I think it's a... there's also a delicate balance between when you publish something, you want to trust the professionals to do what they do and accept what they say, because they'll tell you things that might hurt your ego a bit sometimes, but you sometimes you need to hear those things, and you need to accept that they know what they're talking about, because I've been doing it for a long time. So sometimes you just need to swallow your pride. 

But there's also the, you know, it's a delicate balance. There's also the... you want to retain your integrity. So like, if there's a... if you had a vision for the book and you want to... and... remain true to that vision, you don't want to compromise on any of that either, you want to keep that, you keep your vision and your integrity, and still know that you're saying what you want to say - but still trust that the professionals know what they're talking about and at least hear them and listen to what they've got to say. And there'll be things that they change that you might not like at the time, but when the book comes into publication, you look back and you'll go, I'm so glad they told me to do that. So it's... a bit, yeah, it's a delicate balance. It's... about, yeah, trying to... make sure you cover both bases, listen to them, but also trust in the process that you had or the vision that you had for the book in the first place.

Kate Cooper 27:59

I wholeheartedly agree with you about that critical role of the experts and also what that interaction can bring to improve the process, for sure. Thank you so much, Jeff, it's been so interesting to talk with you. So let's continue our conversation again in next week's program. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was ornithologist writer and musician Jeffrey Krieg. And our thanks go to the website grahamchapman.com.au, for the recording of the bird calls that you heard earlier in the program. 

This program is produced in our Adelaide studios, and can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia Radio, VA radio, on digital, online at varadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes you... [?]

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